European elections, Santoro runs alone and launches his pacifist list

'Peace, land dignity'. This is the name of the list for the European elections on 8 and 9 June launched today by Michele Santoro at a press conference in Via delle Botteghe Oscure. This 'is not a party but a movement, a vector for bringing the word peace to the centre of the European election campaign'. And 'if by chance this small formation were to take 4 or even 3 per cent of the votes this would represent a political earthquake in the country,' Santoro said.

In his opinion, 'the left is shattered and we are certainly not the cause. It is clear that the M5S pursues its own opposition strategy and the PD has a different one. We are not competing with them, we are aiming at the vote of those who no longer go to vote'. On the composition of the lists, he replied: 'There is no need to be impatient, within 12 days we will announce them'.

The idea for the list came from Santoro's appeal after two years of war in Ukraine, 'to fill a political but also a media vacuum. There is no trace of a diplomatic solution and the narrative of the wars, both in Ukraine and the Middle East, is one-sided. We want to bring these issues to Europe because Europe should have a more central role,' says Benedetta Sabene, editor of Servizio Pubblico, Michele Santoro's web media. She goes on to say: 'There is still an ongoing dialogue with other political formations.

Missing from today's meeting, however, were the left-wing parties to whom Santoro had addressed himself. Alleanza Verdi Sinistra (Green Left Alliance) has long raised the question of the symbol: the red-greens have no intention of dismantling the logo that brought them into parliament at the last political elections and under which they want to continue their path. Unione popolare, on the other hand, has different positions depending on its components: more possibilist, Rifondazione comunista (the party that holds the precious symbol that would allow the list not to collect signatures to present candidatures, a particularly onerous task for the European elections), critical those of Potere al popolo, who complain of a lack of clarity and ask for more programmatic guarantees from the promoters of the united list.